Striking a blow against fascism with commentary on current events, finance, economics, politics, music, art, culture and how to deal with our economic lives being bartered away by the elites who have our financial future all figured out: We'll be paying off their debts forever.

If you like what you read here, please make a donation to Pottersville2. Peace to all and let's work to end the wars.

"We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth." - Sydney Schanberg

"The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft, / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies." - John Keats

"It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen ... The world will present itself to you for its unmasking." - Franz Kafka

"“We of the craft are all crazy,” wrote Lord Byron about himself and his fellow poets. “Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.”"

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

"In my lifetime we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. If this is evolution, I believe within twelve years we'll be voting for plants." - Lewis Black

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." – George Orwell

Senator Frank Church in 1975 chaired the Senate Hearings on the FBI’s Cointelpro operation, which spied upon and attempted to infiltrate, disrupt and discredit the peace movement. . . "if a dictator ever took over, (the NSA) could enable to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back. . . . That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. . . . I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

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Conservative Animus

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Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.

Current Readers

Politicus USA on GOP Fascism

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The entire GOP apparatus is slipping toward fascism and millions of Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that the Bible none of them have read takes precedence over the Constitution none of them have read.

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Eco Farm Shitakes, Squash, Kale - Cindi, Nicole & Eddie

Ukraine Disinformation Battle: Little Green Men, Hamsters and the Fog of War

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There has always been a gap in how media on both sides of the former Iron Curtain have reported world events, and it’s growing as the crisis in Ukraine escalates. It has become increasingly difficult to obtain reliable information from any side — west, east, or further east — about what is going on in Eastern Ukraine.
While powerful propaganda machines fill the public space with smoke and mirrors, one of the few facts that can be positively established in Eastern Ukraine is that the body count is steadily growing: a testament of just how easy it is for self-interested foreign powers to start, either intentionally or recklessly, a civil war in the heart of Europe. Continuing coverage is available at this link and this link.

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Red Roots Farm - Kristen & Jason - No Sprays/Delicious Veggies!

Fukushima, Japan Disaster Worsens and Spreads

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While the American reactor industry continues to suck billions of dollars from the public treasury, its allies in the corporate media seem increasingly hesitant to cover the news of post-Fukushima Japan. Continuing coverage is available at this link, this link, and this link.

My Blog Fights Climate Change

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Animal Rescue - Click Everyday!

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Paul Krugman:

I don’t think many people grasp just how raw, how explicit, the corruption of our institutions has become.

Yesterday I had a conversation with someone who, like me, spent most of the Bush years as a voice in the wilderness. And he pointed out something remarkable: although those of us who said the obvious — that the Bush administration was fundamentally monstrous — were ridiculed by all the respectable people at the time, at this point our narrative has become everyone’s narrative.

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Paul Craig Roberts:

_________________ US Media
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"Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda."

"The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media.

Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives — not by journalists — whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers.

Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home."

_________________ War On Terror
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Roberts asked "Is the War on Terror a Hoax", and claims it has "killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims in six countries". Roberts called the attacks "naked aggression" on civilian populations and infrastructure which constitute war crimes.

_________________ Republican Party
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Roberts is seriously dismayed by what he considers the Republican Party's disregard for the U.S. Constitution. He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution.

_________________ American Democracy and Oligarchy
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Roberts has been increasingly critical of what he deems as the lessening of democracy in the U.S.; instead accusing it of being run by oligarchs by stating:

"The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowhere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty.

And that's what the Greeks are in the streets protesting. We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street... There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west.

Revolution is the only answer... We are confronted with a curious situation. Throughout the west we think we have democracy, we hold ourselves up high, we demonize China, we talk about the mafia state of Russia, we talk about the Arabs and so on, but where is the democracy here?"

_________________ Farewell Speech
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"Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It,"

Roberts effectively announced his journalistic retirement. The article, published at Counterpunch.org, begins:

"There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest."

It proceeds to a bitter chronicle of the demise of American intellectual integrity, particularly that of financial journalists and economists. These have been thoroughly corrupted by monetary inducements to misrepresent and ignore what has been, in effect, the systematic dismantling of the nation's productive life, in the name of globalization.

He holds the members of his own journalistic profession largely responsible for abetting relentless outsourcing of American industry, thereby gutting the American middle class and effectively dooming the nation's future.

He describes his own ostracism from mainstream media access, the consequence of his relentless and unflinching criticism of the demolition process over the past decade. His column ends, "The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off."

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Liberal?

"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal."

John F. Kennedy, 1960

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Citizen's United

"[T]his Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."

The nation’s largest bank is operating under a deferred prosecution agreement until at least next January for two felony counts it received in the Madoff swindle, the largest Ponzi scheme in history. It’s under a current criminal investigation over potential rigging of the foreign exchange markets with the New York Times reporting on February 10 that federal prosecutors had informed JPMorgan and three other banks “that they must enter guilty pleas to settle the cases.” Barron’s sister publication, the Wall Street Journal, reported on February 24 that JPMorgan is one of the 10 banks being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for potential rigging of gold and other precious metals.

Against that backdrop, Barron’s comes up with this: JPMorgan is “Back on Top.” Back on top of what – its serial crime spree? The article, by Associate Editor Andrew Bary, goes downhill from there.

We don't need no education.

Unless you'd actually prefer to find out what's being covered up by those touting Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase as "back on top!"

Barron’s should have published its gushing cover story on Jamie Dimon’s stewardship of JPMorgan today – as an April Fool’s joke.

The nation’s largest bank is operating under a deferred prosecution agreement until at least next January for two felony counts it received in the Madoff swindle, the largest Ponzi scheme in history. It’s under a current criminal investigation over potential rigging of the foreign exchange markets with the New York Times reporting on February 10 that federal prosecutors had informed JPMorgan and three other banks “that they must enter guilty pleas to settle the cases.” Barron’s sister publication, the Wall Street Journal, reported on February 24 that JPMorgan is one of the 10 banks being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for potential rigging of gold and other precious metals.

Against that backdrop, Barron’s comes up with this: JPMorgan is “Back on Top.” Back on top of what – its serial crime spree? The article, by Associate Editor Andrew Bary, goes downhill from there. Here’s a few howlers.

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan, who has kept his job through a rising tide of scandals at the bank, says in the article: “We were tried, tested, and true during the worst of times.” Compare that assessment to the findings of former Senator Carl Levin in 2013 after his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 306-page report on how JPMorgan had gambled with bank deposits in the infamous London Whale scandal at the bank and eventually lost at least $6.2 billion of those deposits. Levin said at the time that JPMorgan “piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public.”

Bary quotes Dimon from a January call with analysts as stating that banks are “‘under assault’” from regulators, with Dimon adding that “ ‘We have five or six regulators or people coming after us on every different issue. It’s a hard thing to deal with.’ ” Shouldn’t the debate be why, after a nonstop 5-year crime spree, the nation’s largest bank still is being chased by regulators?

Another howler is Dimon telling the Barron’s reporter that the bank doesn’t take big trading positions and thus it is unfair for some investors to view JPMorgan as a black box, too complex to understand.

Last November, JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks again came under the cross-hairs of the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The Subcommittee released an eye-popping 396-page report on the physical commodity holdings of key Wall Street banks. The investigation found almost unfathomable giant positions at JPMorgan, reporting as follows:

“When the financial holding company’s physical commodities inventory of $6.6 billion is added to the bank’s metals inventory of approximately $8.1 billion – still excluding gold, silver, and all merchant banking commodity assets – and the bank’s copper, platinum, and palladium inventories of $2.7 billion are added in as well, the total market value of JPMorgan’s combined physical commodity inventories on September 28, 2012, was $17.4 billion. That $17.4 billion was about 11.75% of the financial holding company’s Tier 1 capital of $148 billion, which meant that it was more than twice the size allowed by the Federal Reserve’s 5% limit, were it to apply…

“In 2011 (the last complete year of figures provided to the Subcommittee), those inventories included, at various times, as much as 3.3 million metric tons of aluminum (an amount which is more than half of U.S. aluminum consumption that year), 200,000 metric tons of copper, 100,000 metric tons of lead, 6.4 million barrels of crude oil, 3.6 million barrels of heating oil, 900,000 barrels of gasoline, 3.4 million barrels of jet kerosene, and 51.9 billion cubic feet of natural gas. In addition, JPMorgan reported owning or controlling tolling agreements at 31 power plants…

“JPMorgan Chase Bank is the only national bank that, in recent years, has engaged in extensive physical metals trading and maintained a large physical metals inventory…

Elsewhere, Bary writes in the article:

“The bank maintains that one scary figure — some $63 trillion in notional derivatives exposure — vastly overstates the risk because of offsetting positions and other factors. It puts the credit risk of those positions at about $59 billion, and almost 90% of that is exposure to high-grade companies.”

On February 12, the Office of Financial Research (OFR), a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department that was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, released a study of the banks that posed the greatest systemic risk to the global financial system. Using systemic risk scores that evaluated size, interconnectedness, substitutability, complexity, and cross-jurisdictional activities, JPMorgan came in with the scariest score of 5.05 for U.S. mega banks. That compares with 4.27 for Citigroup; 3.06 for Bank of America; 2.60 for Morgan Stanley; 2.48 for Goldman Sachs; and 1.72 for Wells Fargo.

The OFR report found further that “A bank that has large foreign assets and large intrafinancial system liabilities is a potential source of spillover risk. If a large loss in value in foreign assets caused such an institution to fail, the losses could be transmitted to the rest of the U.S. financial system.” Both Citigroup and JPMorgan were listed as having the largest figures among U.S. banks for both foreign assets and intrafinancial system liabilities.

One of the gushiest moments in the article comes with Bary writing that “The outspoken Dimon can also come across as the smartest guy in the room, ruffling regulators and politicians. He brings experience, passion, strategic vision, and a familiarity with minute details of the bank’s vast operations.”

Dimon’s familiarity “with minute details” of JPMorgan’s “vast operations” were nowhere to be found when he told analysts in 2012 that the rumors of wild derivative trades at JPMorgan’s London offices were a “tempest in a teapot.” The tempest in a teapot turned out to be at least $6.2 billion in losses of depositor funds. Dimon was also missing in action as JPMorgan served as the primary business checking account for Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme.

Dimon’s failure to rein in the serial abuses at JPMorgan has led two attorneys, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, to create a Wheel of Fortune showcasing the mind-numbing crimes that regulators have charged against JPMorgan while offering an on-line book that maps out the underlying culture at the firm. Laurence Kotlikoff of Forbes insightfully says this about the book: “The authors’ description of the difference between Jamie Dimon’s view of himself and reality is the best thing since Jonathan Swift.”

Did one of the largest banks in the United States accidentally acknowledge an attempt to bribe members of Congress?

A widely published Reuters story reported that four major U.S. banks have threatened to withhold expected campaign contributions from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee unless “Democrats, including [Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth] Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown ... soften their party's tone toward Wall Street.”

But the article specifically notes: “JPMorgan representatives have met Democratic Party officials to emphasize the connection between its annual contribution and the need for a friendlier attitude toward the banks, a source familiar with JPMorgan's donations said. In past years, the bank has given its donation in one lump sum but this year has so far donated only a third of the amount, the source said.”

A person familiar with JPMorgan's donations—who may or may not be a JPMorgan representative—told a Reuters reporter that JPM told party officials: Be more friendly to banks if you want us to give you the remaining two-thirds of the contributions you were expecting from us.

Even shorter: We are offering you a specific sum of money for specific action—which may simply amount to mouth-shutting and smiling—from members of the Senate.18 U.S.C. § 201 is extremely clear on the legal definition of bribery:

(b Whoever —
(1) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent—
(A) to influence any official act;

Specifically an official act includes:

(3) the term “official act” means any decision or action on any question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy, which may at any time be pending, or which may by law be brought before any public official, in such official’s official capacity, or in such official’s place of trust or profit.

Will JPMorgan face any investigation, let alone penalty, for their attempted bribe? It would be naïve to think so. Yet the only defense for this sort of corruption seems to be that it happens all the time.

Our media and political culture have limited the definition of corruption to gifts of Rolex watches, bundles of cash in the freezer, or falsely reporting mileage expenses. While obviously those committing these offenses should be held accountable, the banks' action here is far more damaging in the long term to our politics because its acceptance ensures their success in manipulating the public policy process.

The banks' confidence in their ability to get away with something that smells like bribery is such that they appear to have telegraphed their quid pro quo offer to a major wire service. But even that understates how broken our system has become. Washington pundits are preoccupied with the question of whether the banks' threat to withhold contributions will impact the pending presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. No one seems to wonder whether it's a problem if the banks, as they appear to, have bought the system.

Our system has become so broken that those participating in it can ignore corruption when it is staring them right in the face. Or worse, they are just waiting to profit from it themselves.

Being a Congress critter isn’t the cushy job many people assume. After all, they must draft laws, organize hearings, write speeches, round up votes, and do all sorts of other things.

Oh, wait … my mistake. Members have staff to do all that, including telling the esteemed legislators how to vote.

Few people realize that congressional staffers have gained far-reaching control over legislation. While the mass media has ignored this power shift, which further removes the people from the making of our laws, corporate lobbyists have long understood it and assiduously wooed staff members with flattery and gifts.

But then it dawned on lobbyists that instead of wooing staff, they should simply become the staff. So when Republicans took charge of the Senate in January, K Street lobbyists moved right into the Capitol Hill offices of the new corporate-hugging majority.

Glyn Lowe Photoworks./Flickr

What a sight to see Tom Chapman, a former top lobbyist for US Airways, now sitting atop the legal staff of the Senate aviation panel that oversees — guess who? — US Airways.

And there’s Joel Leftwich, who pushed furiously to water down nutrition standards for school lunches as a senior lobbyist for Pepsico. Now he can do it directly as the new staff director for the Senate Agriculture Committee, which will re-write the school lunch funding law this year.

What a coincidence.

How about mega-lobbyist Mark Isakowitz, whose specialty is punching loopholes in the Wall Street reform law? As new chief of staff for Senator Rob Portman, Mark is now punching from the inside. And he’s already slipped a special regulatory exemption into law on behalf of big derivative traders like GE and the Koch brothers.

The logo and the company name change, but business stays the same. The mercenary syndicate formerly known as Blackwater has raked in more than half a billion dollars from U.S. contracts to thoroughly fail at stemming the terrorist-supported trade in Afghan opium, according to a new government report.

Between 2002 and 2013, Academi received $569 million from the Pentagon for counternarcotic operations — a sum that accounted for 32 percent of all money spent on contractors involved in drug interdiction.

Other major defense and security companies like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon also did counternarcotics work in Afghanistan but none won bids worth half the value of the contracts secured by Academi.

Despite the national security investments, Afghanistan is still the world's leading producer of opium. In a report released last December, SIGAR said that "Afghan farmers are growing more opium than ever before."

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Beth and Lily Calmly Monitor Farmers Market Traffic

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Oscar Wilde

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Harold Pinter

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless... while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

Chickenhawks Galore

Peace

"A man of peace is not a pacifist; a man of peace is simply a pool of silence. He pulsates a new kind of energy into the world, he sings a new song. He lives in a totally new way his very way of live is that of grace, that of prayer, that of compassion. Whomsoever he touches, he creates more love-energy. The man of peace is creative. He is not against war, because to be against anything is to be at war. He is not against war; he simply understands why war exists. And out of that understanding he becomes peaceful. Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will the war disappear."